11 Ways To Increase E-Commerce Average Order Value

The Average Order Value(AOV) is the average worth of products which each customer purchases at your online store. Average Order Value is a key e-commerce metric as it signifies how much a customer is willing to trust you with her money. Increasing average order value generates more money for your business for the same amount of traffic.

Importance Of A Healthy Average Order Value

The competition in online retail space is only increasing and small online retailers are losing the pricing war and hence customers to the bigger players.

These 2 factors should make smart e-commerce entrepreneurs focus on getting the best ROI in terms of revenue and margins from the set of audience and customers they already have. Instead of spending huge amounts on advertising they must work on improving metrics like average order value to improve their cash flow.

11 Actionable Strategies Which Improve Average Order For Your Online Store

Increasing Average Order Value is a continuous effort. And using the strategies listed below you can get started on this journey.

Pair up the cousins – Customers bought these together

One of the key reasons for Amazon’s success is its high degree of personalization. With a huge database of customers frequently buying with them they have their own algorithms to pick up products which are frequently bought together.

The above snippet is shown just below the fold on the product page. By displaying highly relevant products together Amazon encourages its users to buy more. Customers can even un-tick products which he doesn’t need and checkout with a single click of a button or add them to wishlist.

If you are using Shopify you can implement this feature using this app.

Cross-sell relevant products

Cross-sell is a strategy wherein you suggest your customers buy other products relevant to the current item in the cart. The products suggested could be listed on the product or the shopping cart page. Cross-selling is a great way to push in more products into your customer’s basket. However, the key here is how relevant and non-intrusive the cross-sell is to the user.

Cross-sells on shopping cart page

Among the top 100 online retailers, Staples does it best. Staples has an app called basket builder, which is an interface that helps users add more products to their cart before they checkout. The user can add more products to his basket using a simple click. The user can add multiple products without leaving the cart. This helps in increasing AOV without hurting conversions. This improves AOV without overwhelming the user. This kind of cross-sells is perfect if you are selling apparels, stationery, heavy instruments or office supplies.

Bathandbodyworks does best when compared to its counterparts. The page suggests more relevant products and a user can add the product to his bag and edit quantity without even visiting the page.

Cross-sell on product page

Cross-selling on product page helps people realize that there is more to buy apart from the product he is viewing. Often people do continue shopping in spite of adding a product to his cart. Cross-selling on the product page is widely used strategy by top online retailers.

The idea of increasing your average order value is not to bombard users with options so that he buys more. The key is to suggest products in a way that they don’t interfere with the current buying process of the customer as doing so the customer could be a victim of the paradox of choices.

Macys.com use a clean recently viewed items on the product page below the main product details.

Bundle high affinity products

Product bundles is a most common tactic used by online retailers to flush their old inventory. This approach can be used to increase AOV too. Bundles are popular during holiday seasons and often gives high value to the customer. One great way to bundle products is by selling a bunch of highly relevant products together. For instance, a bundle of harry potter books, a bundle of iPhone accessories or a t-shirt pack can motivate the customer to shell out more as she sees more value in buying the bundle than in buying individual products.

Upsell Higher Price Products

While cross-selling is about selling alternative products upselling is about selling higher end or more products during or after the purchase. People make their buying decisions based on value, not just price. Customers often buy a more expensive product if they feel the product has better value and fits their needs. SAAS companies use this approach by means of a pricing table. Pricing tables are a great way to showcase what best suits a customer and making him choose a plan which fits his need in spite of it being expensive.

ASOS has a feature wherein a user can buy the look portrayed by the model right from the same page. She can add all items the model is wearing on to the cart and checkout. This feature is very useful in increasing AOV if you have an online clothing store. So your customer who visits a page to buy denim shorts might end up buying shoes and socks which go along with it.

Bathandbodyworks displays other products from warm vanilla so that the products suggestions are not interfering with the customer’s decision process. By doing so Bathandbodyworks is selling other skin care products the user might be interested in.

Motivate your customers to buy a high priced item

Few customers buy for the value of money and not just the cheapest option on the shelf. Show them how they are winning by spending more.

Have a higher price for products customers would buy anyway – A customer values a product based on its color, size and his current needs. For instance, white iPhone 5 doesn’t have anything special in it except for its color. There was a high demand for white iPhone 5 and Apple sold it for an extra $100.

Make the expensive product more discoverable – There are many ways to make a product of your choice more discoverable. Few of which could be listing the higher priced item higher in search listings or linking the product from the homepage banner. The idea is not to game the user, instead, it is to make the expensive product discoverable to the user so that he weighs his options instead of going straight for the lower-priced products.

You Save ________ – Tell your customers how much they would save if they bought a higher priced item. When you inform your customers how much they are saying you are subconsciously informing them the value of money they might receive.

Set Free shipping or discounts for a minimum amount order

Give customers a discount or a free shipping only if the order is over a threshold(target Average Order Value). Doing so will encourage visitors to buy more products and avail the offer.

You can apply this strategy sitewide too. You can inform the user on the minimum threshold on free shipping upfront using a banner on every page of your site.

Diapers.com uses an animator right next to its logo to communicate free shipping threshold of $49. The same is passed across the whole website so no matter which page the user lands on she is informed on this goodie. This motivates the customer to hit the $49 mark before she checks out.

Loyalty Programs – Cash Backs & Reward Points

As a promotional strategy, Newegg started preferred customers account $30 cash back to people who complete a $100 purchase with Newegg. The money is credited to the customer’s account which can be used only if he makes a purchase at Newegg. So essentially Newegg convinces a customer to shell out $100 to avail the offer but ties the offer with shopping credits.

Baublebar Vault uses the below-landing page to increase loyalty among its customers. The loyalty program is focused on pushing customers to spend more. More the customers spend, more the vault points they score and deeper will be the future discounts.

Schedule your promotional campaigns at the end or beginning of the month

A large portion of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. Scheduling your promotional campaigns to the beginning of the month will make your customers shell out more since they have more money in the bank and not be worried about credit.

Personalize site experience based on browsing history

Online shopping is a non-linear experience. Users add or remove products from cart, search or abandon the search or leave the site with an intent of buying stuff over the weekend. When your online store technology tracks this user behavior you can understand what exactly the user is looking to buy on your site and display relevant products on the home page upon their next visit to your online store. This gives the user a personalized feel and direct access to continue the shopping and research journey with you.

Amazon uses my shopping and browsing history to convince me and add more products in to the cart as below.

It is 2018 leverage video!!

As per a study done by liveclicker ecommerce sites which use videos to showcase their products have higher average order values and conversions as compared to online stores which rely on text and image based content. Video gives user an intuitive and closer experience with your products which translate in to buying confidence.

About 57% of online retailers who used video on their online store reported positive impact in AOV while 43% of them reported no negative impact.

Segment buyers and personalize email campaigns

Not all customers are equal. Most of us spend based on our income levels and our level of passion for a product. Few customers might trust your offering much more than the rest. These high paying customers can be put on an elite list.

A typical segmentation based on AOV will look like the one below. A smart e-commerce entrepreneur will sell his premium products to the customers in segments to the right which is blue and yellow as chances of them shelling out more money is higher.

As per RJ metrics report top 10% of the customers have an AOV 3 times more than the bottom 90% and the top 1% of the customers have an AOV 5 times more than that of the lower 99%.

Once you find the top customers you can

Create a special email campaign which lists premium products from your online store.

You can increase affinity for this audience to your brand further by sending them a gift or a free pass to try your latest products before launch.

Personalize homepage of these customers with premium products as recommendations.

Split Average Order Value by channel

Not all traffic generation channels are the same. Few channels drive higher spending customers to your online store.

For instance, of all social media channels, Pinterest has higher Average order value than most social channels. As per Shopify the AOV of traffic generated through Pinterest is $58 which is more than that of FaceBook at $55. Which means you will be driving high spending customers to your online store if you do Pinterest marketing right. If you are fashion retail then PolyVore and Instagram can attract higher paying customers.

Always measure Average order value across multiple sources and medium and improve efforts and increase budgets on channels which bring in high paying customers.

Conclusion

All the above ideas above have helped online retailers both large and small increase their average order value. Executing an idea is different from getting it right. Every idea needs multiple iterations before it starts delivering results. You should –

After working 7+ years as a digital marketer for startups and large enterprises I quit my job to start EcommerceYogi. Here I share the exact same tactics which I have used to drive millions of users per month to e-commerce stores. Follow me on Linkedin and Twitter to stay connected.